The idea was to provide services to the more helpless homeless, and it appeared to work. Pilot House in Hyannis took in the people who couldn’t fit in at the NOAH shelter, the ones with substance abuse or mental illness problems that thwarted their attempts at recovery. With plenty of volunteer labor, Pilot House took more than 100 passengers on board during its short life at an old house doomed to be demolished for a runway safety project. The intensive care got some of them over the shoals to shore. Some managed only to keep afloat, and others sank. Then the occupants of Pilot House had to abandon ship, and they and the people who cared for them are still bobbing in a sea of uncertainty. A South Street, Hyannis property owner told the Patriot Wednesday that he has been willing for six months to make a five-bedroom home available for Pilot House. The building is in a professional/residential zoning area in which several group homes are located. This might sound like a safe harbor for Pilot House, but opposition has grown over the last few months. The familiar argument that Hyannis is a dumping ground for services for the homeless has been raised again, while concerns about such needy people living so close to a waterfront only recently connected to the Main Street shopping district have been voiced. Publicly, the town has put Kevin Shea, director of community and economic development, on the case to find a suitable rental anywhere on the Cape. This is an effort to under score the belief that the whole region must participate in solving the problems of the neediest homeless. An attempt to make a rental arrangement between an agency such as Community Action Committee of Cape Cod & Islands, Inc., or the Duffy Center and a private landlord is one option under consideration. If county funds are used to pay the rent, however, the process opens up again. Cheryl Bartlett, executive director of the Community Action Committee, has been at the center of efforts to relocate the Pilot House program and eventually unite it with a relocated NOAH shelter and Duffy Health Center. The Barnstable Municipal Airport Commission agreed to make the Sullivan property between Route 132 and the extension of Barnstable Road, now used for overflow parking, available, and county Sheriff Jim Cummings had promised to donate Quonset huts used to house prisoners when the new jail and house of correction opens in Bourne sometime this month. The huts, which would have served as temporary headquarters for Pilot House and a sort of advance base for the unified campus for services to the homeless, won’t fit the bill, according to the Hyannis Fire Department. “The expense in making them compliant with the state building code would be cost-prohibitive,” said Deputy Chief Eric Hubler. Hubler said Pilot House cares for “incapacitated” residents. “The building has to protect the individual because the individual can’t care for himself,” he explained. The fire department needs to hear more directly from Bartlett about her plans, according to Hubler. “We’d be more than glad to help her,” he said, adding that he’s aware of a vacant downtown building, one already sprinkled, that could be a good location for Pilot House and similar services. Bartlett said she hired a permitting specialist to work on the project. “We’ve in no way tried to bypass anything,” she said. Both Bartlett and Hubler have said they’ve learned about each other’s plans in the newspapers, which both agree is not the best venue. Keeping up public pressure for action is Alan Burt, who runs the Salvation Army’s Overnights of Hospitality program that brings homeless people to many Cape houses of worship for meals, fellowship and a night’s sleep away from the shelter. He has appeared before the town council to push for action on Pilot House and has met privately with town officials as well. “I have been so impressed with the leadership and tireless efforts of Cheryl Bartlett,” Burt wrote in an e-mail message. “She has been an amazing force, as have her staff and that of the Duffy Center, real heroes on the line helping and loving the least among us.” In a subsequent message, Burt wrote that he believes that town leaders have “an immediate plan to move forward to help with the crisis at hand and a good direction for a long term and better solution all around.” Burt said a resident of the NOAH shelter, Mike Shepley, planned to accompany him to last night’s town meeting and read the letter he wrote in July 2002 after the town evacuated camps in the woods used by homeless people. The letter ends: “Furthermore, we are not “these people” or “those people.” We are a part of the Hyannis community. We shop and frequent your businesses. Let us address the problem together and create the attitudinal changes to prevent homelessness on the Cape. Let us be a model to end homelessness across America.”